We Were Never Two
by Kaesteranya
Summary: Bounen no Xam'd fanfiction: my collection of drabbles/standalone shorts/flash fiction pieces for Raigyou and Ishu. Contains spoilers, of course.
1. Your heart is an empty room

**Your heart is an empty room.**

_Consider this an alternate version of Raigyou's return, particularly the part where Akiyuki finds him in the tub and runs off to do his errands for him. Let's just say that it wasn't Akiyuki who came around._

…_Oh, and it goes to show that if you don't know who Raigyou is, then this is probably spoilerific. OTL_

_The title is taken from the 31 Days theme for September 20, 2007._

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It was a little odd, finding himself, once again, on a ship that had given him a home when he had thought he had lost everything, lying back in bathtub that was too big for one person but too small to fit two, staring up at the ceiling and seeing nothing but the scars his hands left whenever they became the claws of a monster. Raigyou breathed out a sigh, just to test how much it'd echo in the tiny little bathroom – he was through with blowing bubbles and splashing about, but he was too lazy to bother shaving. Not that he could shave if he wanted to. He couldn't find the razor anywhere.

He nearly whooped for joy the moment he heard the door open, and immediately stuck his hand out, pushing the curtains away, palm outstretched.

"Hand me the razor, will you?"

One pause, and then the curtains just behind him were shoved back with a violent hand and Raigyou suddenly found himself staring up at Ishu – or, more accurately, her boobs.

"…My. You've grown."

It was not the smartest thing to say to a woman holding a very sharp and very shiny razor, but Raigyou felt as though he had already done far stupider things in his life. One more indiscretion wasn't going to make a difference. Ishu, to her credit, betrayed nothing but a twitch of her eyebrow before she pulled up a chair and sat at his head with a disdainful sniff. She lifted the razor, giving Raigyou a split second of terror before he realized that she was holding the shaving cream in her free hand.

"Relax," Ishu murmurs, as she pressed the razor against the line of his chin. "I don't plan on killing my only line of defense against those Humanforms."

Midway through her shaving him clean and him holding perfectly still because he knows that she was only too good with a blade and any injury would be deliberate on her part, Raigyou realized that this was a rather familiar position: him lying down somewhere and her shaping him up to her liking, both of them focused on something else, neither of them talking. It used to be a ritual of theirs, out on the battlefield. The proximity of such a moment was the closest Ishu would ever let him get.

Ishu finished up in record time and stood up, smoothing out her skirt and adjusting her glasses – two gestures, one remarkably feminine, the other eerily professional. Woman and soldier all in one.

"Stop screwing around and make yourself useful for once."

"Yes, ma'am."

And as she leaves, he almost catches some loose strands of her long, blue hair.


	2. Zerosum game

**Zero-sum game.**

_The title is taken from the 31 Days theme for September 30, 2008. There are spoilers for the last three or four episodes of the TV series._

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Raigyou eventually came to realize that Ishu treats all things the way she treats her guns: with just the right amount of care and amazing amount of precision, with tentative touches that are just shy of intimacy, with a critical distance that allows her to remain close at all times but step away the moment she needs to.

It is only after he confirmed this that he came to understand what she expected their relationship to be like. It used to upset him, this habit of hers at holding all things at an arm's length unless she felt the need to fix it with her own two hands, but he knows, better than anyone, that she is not nearly as strong as she would like to be, and exposing this would only hurt her.

It is for this reason that he nearly regrets his decision to throw himself in between her and certain death, because in the steps just short of his last stand, they had gotten close – too close – and he is almost worried that it will ruin her. That the way she's handling him now is going to cause everything to explode in her hands.

He would, however, rather risk crippling her ability to love anyone else again than fail to protect her one last time.


End file.
